


Come Prepared

by thelongcon (rainer76)



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: BDSM elements, Bondage, M/M, Object Insertion, Shibari, questionable sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-30
Updated: 2015-01-31
Packaged: 2018-03-09 15:46:04
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,707
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3255404
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rainer76/pseuds/thelongcon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There’s so much Rick has forgotten, so much he has cast aside from Before, these dreams that are memories, some bastardised version of the truth, feel like a map to a distant treasure, where the parchment speaks of dragons beneath hidden waves and a sailor can find his way home, if he navigates the stars, if his knot, his lashings, hold the sail firm.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

 

At first, Rick couldn’t remember his dreams. As a kid, he listened to Shane or Lori recite their nightly adventures, sometimes amused, mostly feigning polite interest, but he couldn’t retain a wisp of his own dreams. Intellectually, Rick knew he did, _had to_ , because everyone dreamt, but they didn’t follow him into the waking world and he never felt their loss. He dreams now. In sharp, static bursts. He dreams in technicolour, surround sound, with a vibrancy that’s borderline feverish; three hours a night, from the moment his head hits the rolled up jacket that doubles as a pillow until his first watch. 

They’re not nightmares, they have nothing in common with his current situation, walkers and gore never creep into the corridors of his slumber.  It’s a mercy to be spared one nightmare when he has to live another, longer, one. To sink into memories that don’t quite fit - inconsequential glimpses of a past played out of order - to see Shane again before the twist; to find Lori with a smattering of summer freckles. Rick goes to sleep without tension.  He wakes up early, steely eyed and calm.

Daryl goes cold after Beth, pared down to monosyllabic answers.  He doesn’t sleep, and if he dreams, then Rick isn’t privy to them.  He hardens into something familiar and Rick thinks ‘good’. It’s the Daryl _he_ knows, the one who walked the road with him, the one when first faced with the prisoners, Oscar and Axel, said ‘hell no, let them take their chances on the road, like _we_ did’, the one who’s had Rick’s six and never questioned his orders.  They walk side by side in the dirt, shoulders bumping, and maybe it’s a selfish thought to concede, but he needs Daryl like that, because the kind ones, the one’s who offer a second chance, who find some epiphany in this hellhole, in Rick’s experience, they don’t make it. A selfish thought, or cruel one, but then Rick Grimes never claimed to be a white hat, Rick’s not certain he’s even a decent man, but he needs Daryl narrow eyed, ready to kill, and he’d have him walk the same knife edge that occupies Rick because he can’t guard the line by himself.  Daryl reverts to how he was, sharp as a bared knife and Rick can’t regret it, he can only grieve Beth’s loss, and allow the man his privacy.  (Rick thinks, in the dark corners of his mind, if that bald-headed cop had the archer pinned to the ground this very second, then Daryl wouldn’t beg for his life.  He wouldn’t stop Rick from squeezing the trigger and blowing the cops brains out all over the pavement the way Rick had wanted.  Daryl would let it happen, and Rick thinks, savage and predatory, good.  _Good.)_

The silence between them is all too familiar. Daryl stays close, a perfect shadow while the others range out. Rick cradles Judith, her body pressed to his torso, her small hands make a grab for his beard, her grip tight as a monkey.  

“Ah,” he says, under his breath.  Michonne shoots a sly glance, amusement clear in her eyes.  Rick grimaces, reminds himself he needs to shave something awful because he’s harbouring an entire eco-system on his face. Judith starts fussing, her face going tiny and red, gathering for a squall.  Rick pulls aside, a rucksack tumbling off his shoulder and one arm buried inside. He squats in the dirt unceremoniously, Judith held close as he pulls items out one by one.  Torch; batteries; compass; rope; energy bars; a baby’s bottle, lying empty; spare formula; butterfly knife; a single bullet rattling in the bottom; another flannel shirt, in desperate need of a wash with baby vomit on one shoulder and blood at the hem.  And a second bottle, half full, buried at the very bottom. “Ah-huh,” Rick says, victoriously, and sloshes it at Judith.  “Brunch, baby girl.”

She screws up her face and hollers.

“You’re a regular boy scout,” Daryl says. He’s studying the mess splayed out around Rick’s rucksack, his voice neutral.  Rick blinks, and blinks again.  He can smell sunscreen, sharp on his nose, ephemeral as a dream. 

He turns his head slowly to stare at Daryl, and says by route.  “I earned all of my merit badges.”

 

                                         ******                                            ******

 

He dreams that night of a placid lake, the water black as coal.  There are droplets on Rick’s skin, sliding over his ribs, pooling in his navel, the wooden boards under him are dark with the run-off.  If he stood up and looked down, Rick could pretend it’s the chalk-line of a murdered body.  Instead, he stares at the ceiling and heaves in breath after breath, limbs still shaking after the long swim. 

He should get up, dry off, get changed in the relative privacy of the boat-house, pull on his singlet and daggy shorts. By the waterside, he can hear the kids still splashing as they finish their laps, he can hear Chris cry out sharp and bright:  “Oh, hey! There he is!”

The boat-house smells of wet tarp, like something foul.

With a groan Rick stands up, he drops his trunks to the floor, steps out of them naked, and peers through the window to see what the fuss is about.  Water trickles down his body, ticklish as a fly on skin. Chris is turned away, hurling stones from the shoreline, hitting the dark line of trees near the bank. “Hillbilly freak!” he hollers, cheerfully.   “Hey, who you fishing for freak?!”

Rick rubs his palm against the grimy window, clearing away cobwebs.  He cranes his neck until he sees a flash of movement in the trees.  “Hillbilly freak,” Chris chants, relentlessly.

 

                              ******                                                         ********

 

Rick wakes up, startled.   A mosquito buzzes near his right ear.

His cock is hard, flushed between his legs.

Rick rolls onto his stomach, disgruntled, forearm under his jaw, biting the flesh to keep quiet, and ruts into the ground. He can’t remember if he was thirteen or fourteen in the dream, he knows it was his first scout camp without Shane. He remembers being bold, so incredibly brave.  In the next breath, he recalls thinking _I’m never going to see these people again,_ and maybe that meant the sense of bravery was for naught.  He can smell sunscreen, remembers the pale flash of a bared stomach, twine rough between his fingertips, and comes, tangled up in sense memories.  Spunk fills the air.

Rick’s breathing slows.  He opens one eye, vision still hazy with sleep, and lets the worried flesh between his teeth go.  His arm sparks with sudden pain.  The face on his watch says it’s a quarter past two in the morning. In the trees, somewhere nearby, Tyresse will be standing watch.   Rick rolls, facing the stars, and slurs to the heavens.  “Who you fishing for?”

The thing about Daryl, is he looks nothing like the kid from scout camp. 

That boy was a scarecrow of long tangled, dirty blonde hair and bare feet.  His ribs protruded, he was small, malnourished, wary as a stray cat.  Like most teenage boys he had zero body fat, and his shoulders jutted out too wide for his frame, beside him, Rick felt like a football star, perfectly proportioned, a reversal of his normal situation because it was Shane who always drew the looks.  It was weird to be the stronger boy, to know he could hold the kid down if necessary.

(It was never necessary.  Not once.  ‘Sides, the kid was part hell-cat on a good day and full-out demon on his worst.)

“He hangs around camp every year,” Chris had crowed. “He likes to play fish.” There was a mean edge to his voice, the _wink-wink-nudge-nudge_ quality of a private school education threading through his cadence. “Heard you gotta pay.”

“Yeah, with what?  My parents didn’t send me to camp with a secret stash,” Mathew rebukes.

Rick tries to tune them out.  He’s practicing his merit knots, a length of wood in front of him as he flows from a Chain hitch into a Cat’s paw, then into a Killick Hitch, the rope pulled taut between his hands, the plank of wood stiff, stout, rubbed smooth and raw from constant bindings.  He thinks it’s a little like art, this intricate pattern of loops, this chain-link fence, but the canvass is all wrong.

“You’re full of shit,” Rick interrupts, easily, and looks up with zero patience for Chris and the rest of his ilk.  “He lives around these parts, is all.”

Daryl looks nothing like that kid, but the next morning, when they’re on the road again, Rick finds himself staring, not at Daryl’s face, or the muscle that line every inch of his body, but at the length of his hair, the dark colouring of it.  It’s grown so long, so _similar_ to that boy, and on top of the thought, Rick thinks, distractedly, why isn’t it gold?

Later, Daryl notes:  “You didn’t sleep much.”

Rick’s skin prickles.  He thinks about rutting into the hard earth, the easy breathing of those sleeping nearby.  He doesn’t know how to blush, and even if he did, the beard covers the worst of it. “If you were awake,” he replies evenly: “then you’d know.”  Rick’s hyper-aware, hyper-tense, hyper- _vigilant_. There’s only one person he knows who can catch him unawares.

Daryl looks away, his hair a drawn curtain. He doesn’t commit to any further comment. 

The tension feels like a lash, deliberately, Rick breathes out, the fight draining away, the accusation unspoken.   _Did you watch me?  Why comment on it?_

Later, Daryl will throw a knife at his head. It hits the wooden door with a _thwack,_ impact vibrating from the tang into the hilt.  Rick drops the empty gun, pries the knife loose, and pivots.  Without his weight bracing the door, it flies open with a crash. It hits the wall and rebounds. Rick sinks the knife into the first walker’s skull.  The blade sticks, scraping bone. Rick plants his boot against the sunken chest and kicks the body clear.  An arrow hits another walker, barricading the entry with a second body, and Rick slams the door shut. “Rope,” he snarls, because the lock is rusted through. 

It’s a commercial door-handle, not a knob so much as a steel bar.  Nails and boards would be better but he’ll take what little time he can get. 

It’s Carl who passes him the rope. Rick hitches a knot, fingers sure, tying off from the handle to a construction beam as Daryl throws his bodyweight against the door to keep it closed.  It won’t last.  Not for long.  Walkers will tear the door of its hinges by sheer numbers.   Rick ties off, heartbeat frantic (familiar), and grabs Daryl by the shoulder.  The two of them scuttle back, following the others into the rumpus room where Michonne’s lifted the floorboards, and the rest of their group are belly-crawling under the house and out the other side to safety.  “Nice rope-skill,” Daryl calls.

There are forty basic knots learnt in the scouts. Rick mastered them all, later, as a young adult he learnt shibari too.

He falls asleep that night, bone tired and _eager_  for it. 

He dreams of summer icy-poles, of a tongue stained lizard blue.  The shock of cold, cold, _cold_ , as the boy swallowed him, alternating the icy-pole (deep-throating) with Rick’s cock; until the heat of the boat-house and the shock of an icy mouth had him shuddering, rudderless and small.  The smell of sunscreen, the slickness behind his own balls, the way Rick had gasped for breath each time the boy had smiled around his length.

The rope around his own wrists was clumsy, the boy didn’t tie it correctly, the lesson incomplete, but Rick didn’t break free. He writhed on floorboards, on the chalk-line of an unspoken crime, and came undone under the other boy’s tongue, the slick curl, the threat of teeth as he swallowed tight. Rick’s ass was slick with sunscreen, balls drawn tight.  The icy-pole, rocket styled, was temporarily abandoned, it left a slick trail of melting blue against his abdomen.  The other boys mouth was warm now, a forest fire of conflicting heat.  “Ready?” he said, pulling off.

Rick was and he wasn’t.   He was full to bursting, sobbing breathlessly, and maybe this twisting fear – anticipation, want, suspense – was what people meant when they said you were too young for sex, this carousel of conflict. “Yeah.”

His eyes were hazel, sharp as a hawk, but in the dim light of the boat-house they turned the colour of beer.  The boy swallowed, and _kept_ swallowing, lips sealed like a vacuum, scraping down Rick’s cock until his nose bumped against pelvic bone.  The pad of his finger brushed a circle behind Rick’s balls, pressed teasingly and entered, and Rick would have jack-knifed upright if the boy hadn’t slapped his other palm hard against his stomach, keeping him down.

It was sticky, messy.  It drove the air straight out of his lungs.  A low mourning keen he couldn’t control. The boy found the icy-pole, still abandoned on Rick’s stomach, and doubled his efforts around Rick’s cock; distracting and distracted.  Liquid heat and a muscular tongue, finding the pathways to pleasure, and then more shockingly the finger in his ass was gone, something ten degrees beyond freezing slid into its place.  Rick’s hole spasmed against the extremes.  He wrapped both hands in the boy’s long hair, jerked his hips up viciously – up - as the icy-pole slid deep.  Rick came with a shout; the broken knot trailing against his wrists. Both ankles were wrapped around a taut spine; crotch smothering the sounds the boy made as he slurped and swallowed, as the boy grabbed the icy-pole by the stick and jiggled it. Rick came with his eyes gone wide and wet.

Later, blue liquid trailed down his thighs when Rick stood up.  He was shaky as a newborn colt.  He didn't know where to look, until eventually, his eyes drifted down.

He grimaced, a dull roaring in his ears, balanced between shame and some other emotion.  His face went splotchy and red.  Serene, the boy licked his thighs, the crease between penis and leg, he found the hollow of his stomach where the stickiness had gathered.  Transfixed, Rick stared at the sharp angles of his face, the bruises, the malnourished chest.  The roar settled, shame ebbing away, turned useless and moot.

Rick kicked his shorts off completely, then took a running leap, out of the boat-house and straight into black water. The rope around his wrist, the incomplete knot, trailed away, it sunk into the watery depths like an eel.

 

“Can’t tie a knot for shit,” Daryl offered that night, when Rick woke with a start in the early hours.  He was straining against the tangle of his sleeping bag, he was heavy between the legs, full with need.

Rick thinks about trips and snares, the hunting skills Daryl has shared with the group, with Rick, and doesn’t comment.

There’s so much Rick has forgotten, so much he has cast aside from Before.  These dreams that are memories, some bastardised version of the truth, feel like a map to a distant treasure, where the parchment speaks of dragons beneath hidden waves and a sailor can find his way home, if he navigates the stars, if his knot, his lashings, hold the sail firm.  “I could teach you,” he says, because Rick was a good study with rope, and turns his head to make eye contact.

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So BrickyLove asked for a continuation to this fic - which for me is a perfect excuse to write bad porn - so blame her. It's totally BrickyLove's fault. Totally

2/.

 

“It’s my turn,” Rick says, with a thread of insistence.

He had swam away from the boat-house - cutting through the water arm over arm until his lungs were screaming - when Rick had floated onto his back, sculling water, the boy was a distant speck. He had his spine turned away from Rick, as if he didn’t give a _fuck_ Rick had cut and bolted at the first opportunity.  Instead he had his fishing pole out, legs over the plank-way of the boat-house, swinging his feet idly.  Rick had watched him, unsettled, then swam on; heading to the cove where the rest of the troop were set up.   His stomach was twisted into knots; he felt like his guts were cramped; pushed out of place. His ass was sloppy, _loose,_ and the rope marks on his wrist were incriminating. 

He didn’t want to see Chris, he didn’t want to speak to _anyone._

Rick was hesitant to leave the safety of the lake. He kept checking himself over, looking for blue stains between his thighs, until he bit the paranoia down. Eventually Rick dug his toes into the slimy bank and strolled toward shore, shaking the water from his curls like a dog.   No one remarked on his passage; as if nothing extraordinary, earth-shattering, had occurred.  

Rick sat among the troop, ate his dinner, talked when prompted and laughed when appropriate.  He rubbed careful fingers along his wrist where the jute rope, six mm in dimension - a three strand pattern - had tattooed him, until the impression faded into unblemished skin.  And somehow, that was worse. 

He felt… _unfinished_.

He listened to the kids as they cussed and farted, and felt like there was a fish-hook lodged in his stomach, a storm roiling in his mind. He snuck away the next day, emotions churning, until he found the boy again.  “It’s _my_ turn,” he insisted, and squared his shoulders, the rope coiled between his fingertips. The boy leant back, braced on his palms, and smirked. 

“You sound _mean_ ,” he observed, as if the threat of violence meant nothing.

Rick was thirteen, maybe fourteen, it was his first experience with sex, and he thinks this is what people mean when they say 'you can be too young for it', that he had been shocked and startled and wanted some of his own back.  Rick bites his lip and thinks, then loosens his grip on the jute:  “No.  Choose a safe-word, you can use it anytime you want, but for now it’s _my_ turn.” 

“Ain’t a competition,” the boy says, recklessly. His eyes trail down Rick’s chest. “Sides, you _liked_ what I did.”  He sounds smug, certain, except for the flicker behind his eyes, the inward curl of his fingertips.  Rick thinks about the two icy-poles he brought to share, he remembers how he keened, immobile with the shock of it.  

“Safe-word,” he says, resolute.  His voice broke two months ago, Rick sounds more adult than he ever has, but he doesn’t know if he _liked_ it or not, what the boy did to him, despite his insistence.  Mostly, Rick felt out of control.  Knocked from orbit.  He came, came so hard, so completely, yet his insides are twisted up, snared like rope.  The boy fidgets, teeth biting down on his bottom lip.  Rick wants to ease the glimmer of uncertainty, because Rick had kissed him first, in some ways started it; and throughout everything that happened Rick never once said _stop_.  He didn’t say a lot of things, in retrospect:  “Pick a safe-word.”

“Megalonyx,” the boy decides, giving in - express permission to swap their roles - then shrugs when Rick boggles at him. “They used to roam these parts once, and for future reference,” he mumbles,  “talking _ain’t_ sexy to me.”

“Tough.”  Rick spits, because not talking was why he swam away yesterday, and adds sharply.  “You ain’t any more experienced at this than _I_ am.”  Like Rick, he's figuring out what he wants. Bluff and bluster, the boy had a throat like a _boa constrictor_ and between Chris’ constant ‘camp stories’ and Rick’s own impatience to lose his virginity, he’d been shammed into believing otherwise.  Or too blind to see it: enthusiasm, Rick’s starting to realise, shroud all manner inconsistencies.

The boy’s mouth turns into a narrow, angry, line, as if Rick’s deduction was a criticism.  “Screw you.”

Rick can see this play out in a thousand ways: how it could turn violent on a pin-drop.  The boy might not want to explore any further, he might not want to swap roles, how he might be looking for the faintest _excuse_ to fall back, and a fight between them now would make it so easy to walk away.  “It’s the truth, I’m betting,” Rick says, then adds softly:  “Also, the truth is as mean as I ever get.”  Nothing’s going to happen that’s not consensual, and if Rick has to talk through every second of it, explain everything he plans to do, then he will.

“Yeah, somehow I doubt that.”  Seconds tick by, the boy crosses his legs, adjusts his position until he’s sitting Indian style.  He scrutinizes Rick for a long moment, eyes narrowed, before he asks in a rush: “What do you want to do?” His shorts are three sizes too big, hand-me-downs from an older brother in juvie, they’re held up by a battered leather belt and a prayer.  There’s the faintest of bruises on his left cheek; every rib visible to Rick’s eye.

“I want to practice my knots,” Rick explains evenly, and lets the jute unspool.  “Take those shorts off.”  Bluff and bluster – his heart is hammering – and Rick wonders if the boy can hear just how _terrified_ he is behind the calm cadence of his order.  “Everything else you have on, too.”

 

                                    *********                                         *******

 

Rope is made for a living canvass, sinuous and contained.  It illustrates every flex, every fluttering muscle.  People use steel for this sometimes, Rick knows, cock cages that surround, but he likes to touch what he ensnares.  He likes to stroke curious fingers over flesh and rope – _to have access_ \- to feel the trapped skin, the tortured heat. He likes the sounds Daryl makes, how he starts off calm, the way he slackens with every casual touch, until the intention changes and Rick’s eyes go dark with want.

The rope leaves a diamond pattern everywhere it touches. A tattoo of impermanence.

Rick starts with the scrotum, pulling the balls down and stretching the skin out.  He loops off three times around the very base of the sac, no mercy here, the flex of rope punishingly tight, then hitches a half loop up the very centre and down the other side, so the two balls, in their fine layer of skin, hang separated from one another, dangling to the left and right. 

Beneath him, Daryl starts to squirm.

“Ssh,” Rick murmurs soothingly,  “’s alright, you’re alright here.”  He sits between Daryl’s legs and waits, and when a minute passes into two, when the archer relaxes, Rick ropes off three more loops, dragging the scrotum _further_ away from the groin - racking him, stretching him taut - until Daryl’s hands flutter in protest, until he bites his lip bloody.  Rick lays down, weight balanced over Daryl’s chest, and kisses the corner of his mouth, licks the salty skin under his jaw.  “Dinosaurs used to roam these parts,” Rick says searchingly.  “Can you name any?”

“W-what?” Daryl whispers, and groans, when Rick rubs a thigh between his legs, taps his lashed balls with a knee.

Rick kisses softer, lets it go wet and lingering, his words barely audible.  “No matter.” He stays there, sprawled loosely on top, the rope still clutched in one hand, with his thumb on Daryl’s jaw, fingers mapping the pulse of the carotoid, and kisses lazily, marking off every languid second.

 

 

              ********                                                           ********

 

 

In the darkness of the boat-house, Rick yanks the jute tight, tying balls to penis, and then compressing, criss-crossing rope down the length of the shaft and back – a zig-zag of skin/rope/skin/rope – before he ties off at the scrotum again.  By the time he’s finished, the boy’s colour has gone hectic, his cock purple with trapped blood.  His mouth moves soundlessly, trembling from thighs to abdomen.  Rick sits back on his heels and checks his watch surreptitiously. “Put your shorts on. The belt too.”

The boy jerks, confusion stark on his face, he lifts his head off the floor. “What?”

“I have an orienteering test.  I have to go.  You’re gonna wait until I come back.  So put your shorts on, grab your fishing pole, and sit on the end of the pier where I can see you.”  The boy stares blankly, he doesn’t move an inch to comply, and Rick tilts his head, tries to make his voice indifferent.  “Wait for me…or safe-word out, and I’ll untie you now…but either decision, _you_ don’t touch those knots.” 

Rick stands.  He brushes his hands off and tries to pretend he’s not watching the boy out of the corner of his eye.  His palms are sweating, heart beating erratically.

Carefully, the boy sits up. 

He moves gracelessly.  Once, his fingers flutter toward his groin but he doesn’t pluck at the knots, and he pulls his shorts on with an exaggerated slowness. He staggers like a cripple, eye-lashes at half mast, and grabs for the fishing pole to steady himself.

Anxious, Rick steps forward and kisses him – the first between them – hand on the wing of his collarbone, and says, solemn as a contract.  “Thank you.”

The boy startles, and Rick can't tell if it's from the kiss or the words. He leans bodily into Rick and says: “Please – “ He says: “ _Hurry._ ” He says:  “I can’t – _I can’t_ – "  He doesn't mention dinosaurs.

“Hillbilly freak,” Rick says, not unkindly. He’s calm, the centre of a storm, for the first time in hours, Rick feels sure of himself. “You can do whatever you want.”

He waits at the end of the pier, hunched over on himself, and when Rick comes back half an hour later, his cheeks are stained wet with tears.  He’s shuddering like a junkie. Rick sits down on the wooden step above him, legs on either side, chest curving over the boy’s spine protectively, and leans down with a handful of sunscreen.

His shorts are hand-me-downs, three sizes too big, held on by a prayer and a battered leather belt.   Rick unsnags the belt, then pushes his hand inside, into the v of the boy’s legs, finding rope and hot skin, and jacks him. sunscreen over jute, over strips of purple skin, rubbing over the exposed crown, where the boy’s dick peeks out shyly from the material of his shorts.  Rick watches the sun go down, the movement of his own wrist negligent.  “Like this,” he whispers, and kisses the boys ear, pushes his nose into the sweat prickling his skin.  “You’re gonna come through _this_.” 

These ropes and these bindings, through the pattern Rick has etched onto his skin. 

He does.  He _did._   The sharpness of orgasm stolen from him; given over into the dull, constant ache of the jute. Wetness spills over Rick’s fingers; a mirror to the tears on the boy’s cheeks.

 

 

                 ********                                                        ********

 

 

“Megalonyx.” Daryl pushes at Rick’s head feebly. He’s come once already, through intricate knots, with Rick’s head in his lap, between his legs, his tongue laving hot and heavy everywhere.  Daryl’s come and the prolonged licks, the heat when Rick swallows him randomly has shifted from arousal into discomfit.  “Megalonyx,” he croaks, breathlessly. “God, _god_ \- give me a minute, I ain’t fifteen no more.”

Rick pulls off with a low laugh, he kisses Daryl’s inner thigh, and plucks at the rope idly. 

“A-ah,” it’s a resonating note.  Daryl jerks, the sound he makes isn’t anything he’d ever want to admit to, like the air’s been punched from his lungs.  Rick kisses him again, open mouthed and wet, and carefully untangles the knots, one by one.  There’s a second when the rope clears away from his skin when it’s _too_ intense. Air currents heightened, the full return of sensation. Rick trails a finger over the diamond pattern, and Daryl curses, balls aching.

“Was you,” Rick states, quietly, a long time later.  “I wasn’t sure you remembered.”

“Not an event you forget.”

“No….I guess not.”  

Rick rolls over, makes himself at home, half sprawled on top; Daryl's pliant like this , all of his hard edges worn bare. Rick can touch him with compassion – he can curl in close and just be. “Soft,” he whispers, after a lingering kiss. “Slow,” he urges, and cants his hips down.  Then like a wish:  “Make it last.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


End file.
